Introduction and question

New Member

Hello all, I hope I am posting in the right area..if not my apologies. My family has tent camped for many years and a few years ago bought an old tent trailer to "get up off the ground". It was fairly old and well used, but it suited our purpose at the time. We eventually grew weary of struggling with ill fitting door and other parts, so jumped on the chance to get a little trailer that is a 'hard body' style that just needs levelling.

It's a 1976 Rambler Peanut Model 1200. Its 13' long and supposed to sleep 4, but I can only see a bunk for 2 where the table folds down. I can't seem to find much in the way of info online for this model tho, so I am seeking any and all kinds of advice to help me out.

My 2002 Ford Winstar has been fitted with the flat four trailer light connector when I hooked up the old tent trailer, but this trailer has the 7 connector style. I bought an adapter to fix this, but simply plugging everything in does not do the trick...no lights. Other than the flat four connection, the adapter also has a white ground wire, a black 12 V wire, a yellow wire, and a blue electric brake wire. Not sure on where all these extra wires would connect up to the Winstar's system...

The trailer's bulbs are ok, checked them with a meter to be sure. I wonder if maybe a new round connector for the trailer would help...since maybe all the connectors in the socket could be corroded and give a bad connection?

The tires are really old also and I am going to replace all of them, after I get the wheel bolts off that is...WD40 has met its match here I'm afraid...lol. Might try some heat tomorrow. I originally planned on just replacing the tires, but that was before I found out it had electric brakes. I am pretty sure by the state of things that those brakes have been neglected and most likely need replacement, if any replacement parts can be found for something this old.

Should I worry about sway bars for this little trailer? It has the connectors on the tongue for them, but I can't imagine how to rig them up to the Winstar??

Senior Member

Your Windstar is a vehicle I hate to see coming. Some idiot at Ford decided that the Windstar would be wired differently. Usually when something is wired in a vehicle, like a light bulb, you have 2 wires. A hot wire and a ground wire. When it is cut on and off, the hot wire is switched. On a Windstar, the hot wire stays hot and the ground wire is switched. The problem is the trailers are still wired with the hot wire being switched.

Drawtite makes what you need to get this vehicle working correctly. It is called a "Low Side Switching Module". It has wiring harnesses for the lights, a hot wire that runs to the battery, a blue wire that goes the brake control, and a ground wire that needs to go to the frame. It will reverse the wiring in the Windstar and make the trailer work.

New Member

Well, I managed to get the wheels off and got some new rubber on them. Turns out the wheel lugs were reverse threaded on one side...no wonder it was hard to loosen them

I've re installed the wheels but have left the jack stands on it for now..in case I wanna look at the electric brakes on it. We leave this Tuesday coming, so don't know if I can do much about the brakes. May have to just rely on the van's brakes for this trip. Same with the sway bars, not enough time or funds to get into that...hopefully I won't regret it!

Got the basic electrical lights working, was just a corroded trailer connection...I put a new connector on and all running lights are working. Does anyone know why one side of the tailights would be brighter than the other? Bulb is quite a bit dimmer on left side...

I seen some electric brake assemblies at Princess Auto and it looks fairly simple to just remove and replace the entire assembly, but would those units they carry fit an old RV like mine (Rambler Peanut Model 1200)??